


Always a Pirate for Halloween

by flutter



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen, Sad, pirate, xander - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-10-26
Updated: 2005-10-26
Packaged: 2017-11-12 02:41:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/485772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flutter/pseuds/flutter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This takes place after the end of BtVS.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Always a Pirate for Halloween

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place after the end of BtVS.

  
Xander remembered dressing up as a pirate that Halloween. He wore the hat, the clothes, the sword—he even wore an eye patch that had made him feel like a real-life swashbuckler. Swashbuckler-y. Swash—oh, forget it. The only difference between his costume from that day and the one coming up was that the eye patch that crossed his face now was no longer part of a festive disguise.   
  
He was going to have to be a pirate for however many Halloween's he managed to survive—one more to look forward to, provided he lived through the night and following morning. Things weren’t so certain now that Buffy had disappeared, traipsing around the world. This month was Italy, or maybe it was France or—well, it was wherever lonely slayers found attractive. In Buffy's case, Xander mused with a resounding snort, it was probably Transylvania. Romania. Somewhere-ania with sallow-skinned, dark haired, brooding type men. Permanently grumpy men with permanently stupid faces.   
  
In the room where he slept, in the small house that he, Dawn and Willow shared, Xander opened the door leading to a cramped closet.   
  
Before the battle with the First, Anya had come to collect a few of her things from their apartment. He hadn't cared to watch when she came to call—to see if what she claimed was hers really was. He had left seconds after she walked through the door, dragging boxes behind her. And when the gang met one last time before the battle ensued, he noticed that she had those same boxes resting on the ground. One on top of the other, the boxes looked ready to be transported with her wherever she went—if she were to go anywhere.   
  
When it was over, when the survivors were racing to leave and he noticed she wasn't among them, Xander found his arms full, hands clutched around the edges of a box. He dragged the same box from the very top of his closet and deposited it onto his rumpled bed. He had only been able to look in the box once before, never making it further than the top layer of random items.   
  
At the top lay mini-photo albums: Anya and Halfrek, Anya and D'Hoffryn, Anya and her favorite Vengeance Demon victims turned into whatever they turned into. Beneath the albums were several slippery items of nightwear that he remembered taking off of her and beneath that—the cash drawer from the magic shop's register? Xander smiled and shook his head; Anya, forever obsessed with making and counting money, would be exactly the kind of person to steal a cash drawer. He placed it on his bed next to where Anya's bedclothes sat on his pillow.   
  
Underneath where the drawer had been he found the red bandana from his pirate costume. He slid it out of the box, ran it around his neck and tied it there. The hat, which was now somewhat crushed thanks to living underneath a heavy till drawer, was plopped on top of his head. He noticed then with his one—hell, only—good eye that the hook was missing. One of the central 'pirate' costume accessories and it wasn't there. Why would Anya pack a sweaty red bandana and pirate hat but not the hook to go with them?   
  
He shuffled below the next few items, hoping he wouldn't blindly stab himself with the end of the missing plastic hook. It was of some surprise when, expecting something pokey, the palms of his hands ran across fur. He jerked back in response, his hands bringing with them a rosy cheek followed by, and connected to, a large, plastic bulging eye. The lid of his functioning eye closed while the patch shifted with his other eyelid's movement. His heart was a fist behind his chest.   
  
Xander's hands reached out, blindly feeling their way back to the box. His fingers slid over the synthetic fur, the palm of his hand turned in to cup the soft curve of the exposed cheek. He reached to grab the scruff of fur and dragged the long body suit from the box.   
  
It felt heavy as he weighed it in his arms and he let it drag him down into a half-kneel, half-stand. His good eye swam in a haze while the void beneath the patch remained dry. When he opened the one to look down at his knuckle-white grip, the tears fell with his gaze and it followed the lines of the rabbit costume in his hands.


End file.
